Balfour Senior Living
Glendale Sports Center Offers 10% Off Personal Training Sessions For A Limited Time
by Mark Smiley
As summer rapidly approaches, you may be digging into your drawer to find your swimsuit. Now is the time to start thinking about how that swimsuit will look and feel on you. The Glendale Sports Center understands these types of considerations so they are running a sale to encourage their members to take advantage of personal training. The Glendale Sports Center has always focused on fitness and health but what many may not know is that they offer fitness assessments and personal training for their members.
The fitness assessments are included in the membership and focus on body-composition analysis, equipment orientation, and mini fitness evaluations. This assessment is a good way to gauge where you are on the fitness spectrum and establish a baseline and future benchmark prior to starting an exercise program.
It is recommended that before beginning an exercise program, you undergo a fitness assessment. It provides key information that can be used to develop realistic goals and design an exercise program that will help meet your personal needs and achieve your goals.
When you have created your blueprint, it is time to consider personal training in your master plan. The Glendale Sports Center offers personal training for its members with four different personal trainers on staff with a varying degree of expertise.
Head trainer Beth Eafanti focuses on 30 minute workouts that cater to the busy professional. Deborah Montour trains the older adults who may be part of the SilverSneakers program, and Paul Hogan is a soccer coach who specializes in sports training. The newest trainer on staff, Dan Roake, will train anybody and is considered the most versatile.
These Certified Personal Trainers provide individualized physical conditioning programs based on their clients’ needs and goals. Members can schedule their appointments any time of the day based on their trainer’s schedule.
If you are not sure you need a p
ersonal trainer or are concerned about the financial investment, consider that a personal trainer helps you define your fitness goals. They also offer a personalized workout, instruction, motivation, accountability, variety and efficiency.
When Sports Center members sign up and pay by May 15, 2017, they will receive 10 percent off their personal training package. “We want to make sure people are still using the gym they are paying for,” said Monica Henrichs, Glendale Sports Center Health and Wellness Director. “The summer months have a lot of activities here in Colorado such as hiking, biking, and climbing, and having a personal trainer gear you up for that in May and the beginning of June is helpful.”
Packages range from $58 for one 1-hour session to $635 for 12 sessions and everything in between. The Sports Center also offers buddy packages where two people can split the cost of a one-hour session and receive even more of a discount.
To learn more, call Monica Henrichs at 303-692-5773 or visit www.sportscenterglendale.com.
Landry Returns To Rugby After NFL Pursuit
by Marco Cummings
Writer for and on behalf of the City of Glendale
The sport of Rugby shares a common DNA with American Football, dating back to the late 1800s when both sports added the aspect of carrying the ball in hand to the laws of the game, branching both sports off from their common ancestor: association football (the sport now known as soccer in the United States).
In the U.S., participants in the two sports often try their hand at both, and one need not look far outside of Glendale to find prime examples. Glendale Mayor Mike Dunafon tried his hand in the NFL with the Denver Broncos in the mid-1970s before becoming enamored with rugby in the British Virgin Islands. Current Glendale Raptors captain Zach Fenoglio played both rugby and football at Regis Jesuit High School in Aurora before moving on to coach both at his alma mater.
The newest addition to the Glendale Raptors’ roster has been forged in a similar mold. Raptors second-row man Ben Landry joins Glendale after a year of pursuing a dream to play in the NFL. The former Seattle Saracens and USA Rugby player earned an invite to a Seattle Seahawks minicamp as both he and the team looked to determine whether his rugby skill set would translate to the biggest stage in American football.
Physically, it was an easy transition to make for the 6-foot-6, 270-pound Landry, who featured at tight-end in the American game.
“As far as running routes and blocking, that was just athleticism that I do every week playing rugby,” Landry explained. “That wasn’t a big change for me at all.”
He also had the benefit of a ringing endorsement from one of the biggest names in the NFL, his longtime friend and former high school teammate, J.J. Watt of the Houston Texans.
“Ben is such a hard worker, and he’s extremely, extremely mentally tough,” Watt said in an interview with ESPN, adding, “He’s a brute force kind of guy.”
Work hard is what Landry did, but he faced numerous challenges along the way in pursuit of his NFL dream.
“The biggest challenge was basic football I.Q.,” Landry explained. “Learning the playbook and stuff like that. You watch NFL on T.V. and you really don’t see how intricate all the play calling and all the audibles at the line are until you get in that situation.”
In the end, his year-long journey didn’t pay off with a much-coveted NFL contract. But he did reap the rewards of the intense NFL training he underwent during that period.
“I’d have to say the physicality is an interesting take,” said Landry. “When I trained for the NFL I really trained for strength, speed, and acceleration. In rugby, you train for aerobic capacity and conditioning. As I’m sitting right now, I’m bigger, faster and stronger than I’ve ever been in my entire life and I’d have to contribute that to a year of trying to prep for the NFL.”
In Glendale, Landry has been reunited with his first love and passion in sport. A rugby player since the age of seven, the Pewaukee, Wis., native was first introduced to the game by his father and uncle, who both played for Milwaukee Rugby Club back home.
“For me it’s always been football in the fall, basketball in the winter and rugby in the spring,” he said. “Rugby is my first passion. [The NFL] was an awesome experience, but going in to that, I put a timeline on that opportunity. I said, I’m going to devote a year to this to give it an actual shot, a solid go, a good effort. If nothing accumulates, then I’m going to head back to rugby. That was always kind of my plan.”
In Glendale, he’s been reunited with a sport he loves but also a familiar head coach in Glendale’s David Williams. The pair developed a rapport while both part of the USA Eagles and members of Denver’s PRO Rugby team, the Denver Stampede, during its inaugural season last year.
“He’s your head strength coach, he’s your head skills coach and the head coach during trainings at night,” Landry said of Williams. “So, you really work with one man and his all-encompassing idea of the entire program. One guy being able to do it all really builds a team atmosphere.”
Williams has likewise welcomed Landry as an important addition to the Raptors.
“The team and I are only too happy he chose to come back to Denver,” said Williams. “Lando brings a lot to the daily training environment with his training attitude and just being a top bloke that strives to be the best he can be. He has gotten straight back into rugby training and analysis, which is a testament to owning his role within the team and doing his job.”
While Landry’s long-term goal is to make it back into the mix in the USA Eagles player selection pool, his job with the Raptors maintains a singular focus: bringing a Major Rugby Championship to Glendale.
“We’re finishing up this season and we have a championship game in June that we’re planning on playing in, and we’d love to win.”
The Watchdog Takes Down Both Ways
There has perhaps never been as contentious administrative law case as that brought by Matt Arnold’s Campaign Integrity Watchdog against Colorado Pioneer Action for campaign finance
violations. Pioneer Action is run by former Congressman Bob Beauprez best known by the sobriquet “Both Ways Bob” for always trying to appear to support both sides of any political argument.
Beauprez set up Pioneer Action as a 501(c)(4) social welfare nonprofit which raised almost $700,000 in money for political races in 2016. He gave the money to an independent expenditure committee he also set up called Colorado Right Now (CRN) which engaged in an incredibly dirty tricks operation largely against highly conservative Republicans in primaries for the State Legislature. Beauprez backs business friendly moderate Republicans as opposed to what he sees as nasty movement conservatives and Tea Party types.
Beauprez claimed that under Colorado campaign finance law he only needed to report that the Pioneer Action had given the $700,000 to the independent expenditure committee and not who had given Pioneer Action the money in the first place. He claimed it was a perfect “dark money” operation in which no one would ever know who funds him. But Administrative Law Judge Robert Spencer found that Pioneer Action was itself a political committee and did have to disclose its donors. He fined Pioneer Action $17,000. Beauprez was lucky as Spencer could have levied the full $770,000 in fines.
But now comes the big question of will Beauprez finally have to disclose his true dark money sources? In a gubernatorial primary against Tom Tancredo in 2014 money was laundered for Beauprez for last-minute attack ads. First, the money was put through the Republicans Governors Association and then through the Republican Attorneys General Association to a Mitt Romney related political association in Colorado. Beauprez successfully avoided having to disclose who was behind that serpentine dark money scheme.
Beauprez has always been an empty suit and tool of more powerful people. Exactly who is pulling his strings has never been discovered, but perhaps now it will. Of course, this is just the beginning of the battle. Spencer’s ruling will be appealed all the way up the line. The $17,000 fine is just chump change for Beauprez’s backers. He has spent into six figures with his attorney Douglas Abbott of the highly expensive big blue-chip law firm Holland & Hart. Abbott and Holland & Hart undoubtedly came up with the dark money scheme in the first place.
In this litigation Matt Arnold has scored an incredible victory against overwhelming odds. It is truly a David versus Goliath matchup. Arnold is not an attorney yet he bested one of the best law firms in the state. Beauprez has millions at his disposal from people who will do anything to prevent from having to come out of the shadows.
There are two likely suspects for the dark money source behind Beauprez — Phil Anschutz or the Koch brothers. In January 2017, Reason Magazine released an out-of-the-blue attack piece against Matt Arnold by Nick Sibilla and John Kerr. Why would a national magazine come out against a highly parochial figure like Matt Arnold? Perhaps it is because Reason Magazine is funded by the Koch brothers. If they were the source behind Beauprez, they would have strong reason to dislike Arnold and want to stop his money inquiry.
At the same time Arnold came under attack from the Colorado Springs Gazette which reclusive Colorado billionaire Phil Anschutz is pouring money into as an alternative to The Denver Post. Incredibly, Arnold discovered that the dirt digging for the Pioneer Action/CRN political smear pieces were performed by none other than Dede Laugesen, the wife of the Gazette’s editorial page editor Wayne Laugesen and the newly hired Gazette political blogger Dan Njegomir.
When the Gazette’s editorial page was lambasting Arnold on behalf of Beauprez, and Njegomir was attacking Arnold in the Gazette’s ColoradoPolitics.com they failed to mention they were or had been on the payroll of Beauprez and Pioneer Action. Reporter Megan Schrader in a story in The Denver Post on April 4 said that this lack of disclosure “looks really bad.”
So who owns Bob Beauprez and the Colorado Republican establishment? Is it the Koch Brothers or Phil Anschutz? Of course, it could always be both in tandem.
If there is anyone in Colorado who will find out who the dark money source is, it will be watchdog Matt Arnold. It is not easy to fight alone against some of the richest and most powerful people in the state. Incredibly he seems to not be deterred. We can’t wait to see what he discovers next.
— Editorial Board
